Archive for September, 2010

I’ve been completely overwhelmed this past month as I started a new music teaching position at a new school. I taught for 7 years in a variety of capacities at another district so I had forgotten what it’s like to start afresh in a school. Of course there’s always trying to maintain your predecessors successes, and then there’s trying implement new ideas and strategies into the program. Did I mention I was on two campuses? Oh yeah…middle school and high school. It’s been intense but I can say as I sit here that the dust is beginning to settle. One thing that is new to me is teaching Garageband. What a great program and the kids love it. I wish I could let them “doodle” in it for hours, but one must structure these things with curriculum, i.e. lesson plans. So this past week was a 56 measure “film trailer”. These kids are quite talented and I’ve been very impressed with their ability to put tracks together that actually make sense and sound great! Anyway, I could go on about school since it’s my new life right now, but I also thought tonight about my own creativity and how that can easily get lost in the hustle of teaching and being a mom. So this week I hope to finally post my two new songs which I did receive a couple weeks ago, but just haven’t had time to upload. I first wanted my co-writers to hear them and both gave the thumbs up. Which brings me to my next thought…

Thank you to Amir Aly at YLA Studios in Malmo, Sweden. He is quite a genius and I am always amazed at his calmness and brain power throughout the process of laying down new songs. He and guitarist Pelle Jernryd finished off some tracks and mixing after I left in March. I can’t possibly thank them enough for their magical touches to the songs. I co-wrote one song with Anine Bing, a fine musician in her own right. I hope some day she can record her own vocal tracks over our song. I think it would sound great. And Ron Hollis co-wrote the other song. He is a fire chief here in Santa Cruz and writes brilliant lyrics on the side. So I have come to appreciate the art of working and then songwriting when we can! With school balancing out I will soon be able to post the songs. For now, it just felt good to write about it.